If, God forbid, one of your kids was gunned down by the cops after a freeway chase on live television, would you lawyer-up and file a $120 million claim against the LAPD for "brutally and unlawfully" shooting your kid?

Maybe.

Before he was even buried?

That's what the parents of 19-year-old Abdul Arian have chosen to do.

Ahmad and Deena Arian gave the go-ahead to their attorneys, Jeffrey M. Galen and William Margolin, to file a claim against the Los Angeles Police Department for $120 million, a figure that represents, in the words of Galen, "one million per bullet."

The claim coincided with a protest by approximately 100 of Arian's family and friends outside the LAPD Devonshire Station in Northridge.

Protesters accused the LAPD of being everything from "trigger happy" to Islamaphobic.

While I'm loath to criticize a family swallowed up in unimaginable grief, it appears this tragedy was authored not by the cops; rather by Abdul Arian, a young man who did everything wrong behind the wheel of a car.

Like George Zimmerman's failure to stop following Trayvon Martin after being told, "we don't need you to do that," Abdul Arian's failure to pull over after running a red light initiated the events that concluded with his death on the southbound 101 at the Canoga exit.

Whatever investigators ultimately conclude about the eight officers' actions that awful night we already know one thing - Abdul would still be alive if he had simply stopped his car as instructed.

Three weeks ago I got nailed with a speeding ticket on the same stretch of freeway.

Had I floored it, hung U-turns, nearly run down pedestrians, raced onto, off of, and back onto the 101 and spun my car into oncoming lanes - all while telling a 911 operator I had a gun and would use it on the cops ... and then after a PIT maneuver, had I hopped out of my car and brandished a cellphone like a gun, I can assure you I would not have written today's column. Or anything else. Ever.

Everyone has his own way of expressing grief. But initiating a lawsuit before Abdul's body was even buried raises the ugly specter of a payday rather than grief.

Injecting the race card - with zero facts as some have done - is flat-out irresponsible.

Police officers owe us their very best efforts to use their authority with wisdom and discretion. We owe the police our best efforts to make sure we never put them in a position to invoke deadly force.

And it wouldn't kill anyone to get a few facts before we condemn, exonerate or litigate.

Doug McIntyre's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. You can reach him at Doug@KABC.com.